home
bio
babypage
academic work
personal stories
archive
contact me
Links I love:
Enjoy your visit and come again soon...
Paula loves Flamenco. She watches the dancers in the intermission of the Carmen DVD. She gets up, stomps her feet in her best approximation of the zapateado. She lifts one arm over her head, then the other one.
At the Ayyam-i-Ha party Saturday night we were thrilled to see they had hired a duo of Flamenco guitarist and dancer as the evening's live entertainment. Paula went wild. Totally fascinated, she walked onto the floor, gazing up at the woman in the flowing peach shawl and red skirt. Totally unselfconscious, Paula did her zapateado next to the pro, raising first one arm, then the other in the air and stomping her feet.
When I was able to lure Paula back from the dance floor, she pulled her chair to what would have been front row center, except everyone else was sitting at tables. She pulled herself onto the chair. Alone and in the best seat of the house, she sat for as long as she could bear it. Then she climbed down and returned to where the dancer was now seated, next to the guitarist. The dancer was clapping out a rhythm over the guitar, but she paused briefly to hand Paula the white fan she had used in the previous dance.
Paula opened the fan and took the floor. For a two-year-old with no formal training, she is a pretty good dancer. Unorthodox at times, but still captivating. At one point she stopped dancing and ran to the guitarist's amp, placing both hands against it and bouncing in time. She looked at me and grinned, eyes wide, like she'd just discovered she could fly.
Needless to say, I didn't have the heart to pull her off of the dance floor. As the pro got up to dance again, Paula watched her with a serious expression and danced next to her for the rest of the program. When the dancer swirled her full skirts, Paula held the sides of her blue dress and swung it back and forth, tight against the fronts of her legs. The pro acted like they had rehearsed it in advance.
Afterward she recommended some videos Paula might enjoy, and I was pleased to learn that one of them was the film Flamenco by Carlos Saura. I had ordered it from Netflix and it was set to arrive today.
After dinner tonight when Paula was doing her Flamenco dance unaccompanied in her crappy little princess dress-up shoes, I decided it was time to blow her mind with some of the real thing.
She was loving the Flamenco DVD so much that she didn't see me slip downstairs to grab the lavender silk tablecloth I picked up last fall at the thrift. The cloth is beautiful but it stank, so it's been airing out downstairs until now. I took some measurements and laid it out on the living room floor. Paula and Coco immediately began rolling around on the cloth, so I knew I had to work quickly.
I cut a wide circle out of the cloth and made a hole in the middle - I am not a seamstress, mind you, just a lady with scissors. I made little slits around the middle and threaded it with the belt from an unflattering twinset I've long since thrown away. "Arms up!" I told Paula. I put it over her head and tied it around her waist. A real - well, sort of real - dancing skirt. I turned her toward the mirror but she didn't get it until I grasped the sides of the skirt and swirled them like the Spanish and Mexican dancers do it. Again, like she just learned how to fly.
That look made me feel like I could fly, too.
The performers on the DVD were singing and dancing. A woman with intense dark eyes and a green dress got up to sing. She looked as though she were crying as she sang these words in Spanish:
What is that light shining from the olive grove?
It is the eyes of my daughter that look like the eyes of my mother
There's a brightness in your eyes that I gave to you
You took me from the darkness, and at my side I saw you suffer
That's why you'll always be mine and I'll always be yours
You'll always be what I never expected from anyone
Whether the sun shines or not --
Which is what? Glamorous? Yeah, then I guess what the Journey song says is true.
Joel's heading into another crazy week with the band. In the studio tonight, teaching lessons tomorrow night, off to some gig somewhere out of town Wednesday, back Friday for an evening gig. Paula and I are gearing up for a week without Daddy.
But I'm hoping it won't be too bad. We'll spend evenings at friend's houses, I think. Spring for dinner so we don't make ourselves unwelcome, do our best to be funny, charming, engaging. Drive home around 7:30 and hope Paula knocks out in the car.
I'm really hoping to also get someone to come help me clean the house this week. As soon as I get off line I'm going to call about it.
Paula just brought her baby doll and a blue crayon to where I'm writing (noodling is more like it), put the crayon in the baby's mouth and signed "No! No! Not food!" Well, she's not learning not to eat crayons herself, but look at that parenting! That's four star, people.
The Baha'i Fast will start Wednesday at sunset, and I still don't know if I will fast. This is my first Fast since I weaned Paula. Suffice to say that it was always hard for me (like getting sick hard) before, and now I've added some more variables to the mix. But maybe I'll give it a shot - that's no eating or drinking from sunup to sundown for 19 days - and hope for the best. Hell, after what I've been through in the last two years, 12 or so hours of not eating or drinking should be a breeze. Right?
Coco's licking where Paula threw up on the rug a few days ago. Better run.
I'm further in on the post-partum depression memoir Inconsolable by Marrit Ingman. Have you ever heard the saying that depression is just anger without enthusiasm? Well this woman has gotten her enthusiasm back. She's angry.
Ingman is angry at male child-rearing "experts" who preach that if you do it their way your child will be healthy, content, independent and that you will share in the tranquility and triumph of successful parenting. You will be well-rested, satisfied and have an active sex life. Any other outcome can only mean you didn't do it right.
She is angry at a corporate culture that portrays children as accessories to coordinate with mass-produced crib bedding and diaper holders. She is angry with doctors who didn't believe her about how miserable her son was, therapists who invited her to join cults, and strangers who brag about how their decisions to breastfeed or do EC or Ferberize made their children into quiet little angels.
But she doesn't come at these targets as a victim. It's the anger of feeling like you're the only one who's sane while everyone else is crazy. Except she's crazy, too, or she was.
She comments about Dr. William Sears, guru of the Attachment Parenting philosophy. She and I both read his book, The Fussy Baby, when our precious infants were tiny, screaming colic monsters. This book at least acknowledges that some babies are just Born This Way. Their temperaments are more sensitive or they are in pain or whatever, but just nursing them on demand, wearing them and sharing a family bed is not going to change these kids' basic high-need personality. That's a nice thing to see in print from the guy who elsewhere promises that babies cared for according to his recommendations DON'T CRY.
But Sears puts a different spin on the high-need baby: this baby, with its intolerance of discomfort, its colic, reflux, chronic bladder infections, eczema, and/or in our case undiagnosed hearing loss, is a blessing to the parents. The baby will help them tap new reserves of endurance, compassion, strength of character. They will be so thankful for this little one who can never be put into a carseat, taken out after 2 p.m. or held for more than a minute by anyone other than Mom without sounding an earsplitting alarm.
Ingman's response?
Let's not bullshit ourselves, people, she writes. Of course you'd have it another way if you could. It's not your child's job to teach you the meaning of compassion. ... Your child does not suffer in order to build your character. If you could take all the reflux out of your child's body and put it into yours, you would. So don't shine me on about how you're thankful for your child's fussiness.
This thought stayed with me. I have long looked for the positive side to what was life with a clingy and non-communicating shriek box, and is now life with a highly self-directed toddler with hearing aids and nascent communication skills. Sometimes I have succeeded in finding that silver lining. Other times not so much.
Last night I tried on "I would change it all if I could." I had my very first Night Out Alone, a movie and milk-shake night over at Jody and Amy's (after I put Paula to bed, of course, with Joel in front of the TV, ready for whatever might come his way). Amy's been through the wars, too: two kids, ten months apart, the younger one with autism. She knows Paula, and she knows first-hand what I'm talking about when I say "high need."
I told them yes, I would change it all if I could. Amy nodded. I said I would custom order a hearing child with a mellow and agreeable personality, highly verbal, moderately intelligent (or even really dumb).
But even as I said it I felt like I was cheating on my daughter somehow. Maybe it's my desire to be Deaf Culture Correct and not talk about her hearing loss as a disability or disease. Maybe it's just that I have repeated to myself so many times the saying from the Baha'i writings: Be generous in prosperity and thankful in adversity. I have clung to this mantra as thoughts of smashing my head in, leaving Paula, just driving away for good, swirled inside me. Sometimes it helped, other times it got lost in the tempest.
Lying next to Paula this morning as I put her down for her nap I thought again about this idea that I would change it all.
Because even though things are getting better, she continues to be a challenging child. Between pneumonia and pulled teeth, the last week has been so stressful. Paula's whining, crying, demanding, clinging behavior, the eating of crayons, the insistence on multiple baths per day has not helped. I lost my temper more than once. But this is my child. She makes me crazy quite often, but I guess I really do love her the way she is.
This is my girl who can cling to my back by holding on around my neck and clamping her knees over my hips so I walk around the house with hands free, saying, "I've got to get this monkey off my back." My girl who asks for airplane rides on my feet, then can't stop giggling when I press my soles against her little chest. When we come home, she runs to Coco's crate and says "Toe-toe! Toe-toe!" while fingerspelling C-O-C-O so her hand looks like a little PacMan. Thank goodness we didn't name that dog Paloma.
She loves nuts and butter, would prefer to eat both in big handfuls (this is also true of Coco, but I'm talking here about Paula). She wants to watch Bizet's Carmen and dance to the song Down on Leah's Farm from Signing Time. She loves ducks, owls, penguins and frogs. My girl sits on her little potty and asks for a book, or like this morning "Where's the doll?" She really said that, and signed "WHERE DOLL?" I can't wait to take her to the Ayyam-i-Ha party tonight and dance salsa with her till, like, nine p.m.
Would I go back and reprogram her if I could? Opt for a highly portable hearing child who speaks early on and whose vocabulary is heavily weighted in the "I love you, Mommy" department?
I guess not. Now that we've been through so much together, I could never go back to life without my very real, very complicated, truly wonderful little girl.
I've started reading Marrit Ingman's memoir of post-partum depression, Inconsolable: How I threw out my mental health with the diapers.
In some ways it's nice to realize that even at my worst I didn't try to kill myself, only to be prevented by the lack of a babysitter. But it does bring back some of my darker moments, like the many old text messages to Joel from my phone's "sent" file that go along the lines of "Paula won't sleep and I'm going nuts. I feel so alone."
I'm glad I never went so far as to hurt myself, but I did think about it on nights when Paula's shrieking began to echo through my head and make me willing to do anything to stop it. As recently as the end of last summer I felt for a while that I hated Paula for making me feel so terrible about myself. What a difference a few months and a language can make.
But some of those unhealthy patterns persist in my head and demand some kind of resolution. Paula got sick over the weekend and by Monday I knew I didn't like how this was going. Her fever kept burning and she refused food, drink, or the chewable Tylenol "candies" she loves so well. Joel and I bundled our red-faced rag doll and took her to the doctor.
After waiting at least an hour as Paula became unable to stay awake, even surrounded by about 7,000 other kids and babies, I threatened to take her to emergency if she wasn't seen soon. They showed us into a room.
Paula had bronchitis and a very slight case of pneumonia. Very slight. I'd hate to see what a full-blown case looked like.
I resolved to keep her in this week, no swimming, no playgroup. None of the fun activities that make Mommy's life bearable. Pneumonia, I repeated to myself. Pneumonia.
But yesterday, half-way through Paula's scheduled convalescence, something came up. My tooth has been bothering me for a while and yesterday it got really painful.
In a spasm of determination to take care of my most basic needs for physical wellness, I called my draconian dentist - the guy who scared me away from all dental work three years ago - and set up an appointment.
If you've ever wondered what it feels like to have a tooth pulled under local anesthesia, I'm here to tell you. It's not really a big deal, if you don't count the ripping sounds.
But the really unpleasant part of the experience was that after dropping Paula at Marylu's house so I could see the world's worst dentist and get an abscessed tooth pulled, I felt wracked by guilt, truly awful. My emotional response would have been appropriate if I were getting a sitter so that I could go participate in an all-night crack orgy.
Why that guilt about taking care of such a basic need? I mean, if that's my idea of a hedonistic good time, I need to get out more. I clearly have a long way to go before I achieve some kind of balance between my needs and those of my child.
Now my jaw has a hole the size of the tooth the draconian dentist had it in for since I last saw him. I picked up Paula from Marylu's, came home and took two Vicodin. The pain in my mouth and my confused swirl of perfectionism and maternal feeling receded.
This morning I'm a little woozy from the dope and dentistry, but at least yesterday's experience has given me one gift today: lowered expectations. That would be great if only my daughter hadn't woken up with exactly the opposite.
Things have been going great in the sleep department. Night before last I think I got eight hours of sleep! Amazing. Absolutely amazing.
I don't ever want to go back to the way it was before. Two, maybe three hours of continuous sleep at a time for months and months on end. I can't go back! I'm hooked on a decent night's rest.
Which I'm sure is why I am kind of a mess this morning. Last night Joel ate a dinner of thick, fried chow-fun noodles with chicken and veggies right before bed, so when Paula woke up around 2:30 and needed some parental involvement he was still in his carb-induced coma. I woke from a deep sleep to the sound of Paula screaming from inside the bedroom and jumped up to go get her. Joel began waking up as I entered the room and called his name.
"Well, I guess I shouldn't eat such a late and heavy dinner," he mumbled.
"Are you wearing earplugs?" I asked him.
"No, were you?"
"Yes."
He groaned.
I got Paula calmed down and snuggled with her till she fell asleep. But I found that I couldn't get comfortable in that bed anymore. The big bed is no longer a place of rest for me, more a place of employment. Besides, the many wet diapers in the wastebasket were stinking, so I got up and went back to the futon. Aaah! My bed of escape from responsibility.
There I slept for another two or three hours, till about five thirty. Somehow my internal clock got messed up again and instead of waking up at 6:30, which for me is a luxuriously late morning, I was lying there staring at the ceiling at 5:30.
By eight this morning I had snapped at Joel, then hugged him and apologized.
Then, "I feel fat."
Joel, my mom and my friend Marylu are all losing weight. I wonder if somehow I'm helping by mystically siphoning their fat onto my hips and waist.
"You're beautiful," Joel says. Good old Joel.
"I just don't like feeling like I don't look good in my clothes when I leave the house."
"You do look good. Some people, no matter their weight or what they wear, always look good. You are one of those people." Joel. Worth his (albeit declining) weight in gold.
Sigh. It's nice to hear those things when I'm feeling fat and grumpy, haven't had enough sleep, probably have PMS. Is this what it used to be like all the time? Before, when I never slept more than a few hours at a stretch? Lord, I hope not. Either way, today is bad enough without the prospect of going back.
My one bright spot today is that we have swim class. Nothing cheers up a fat girl like parading around in a swimsuit.
I can't believe the difference after getting a solid night's sleep (that's usually six or seven hours) a couple of nights in a row. Amazing.
We're trying something new again to see if we can all get more sleep around here.
In the quest to overcome Paula's wee-hour insomnia, we've tried a lot of things:
Chamomile Valerian Melatonin Passionflower Pediasure Carbo-loading Protein-loading Black-out curtains Night lights Late meals Light dinners Beans Magnesium supplementation Moving her to her own bed Moving her to her own room Moving her to her own tent Getting up to comfort her Playing dead And endless walking, rocking, comforting, bottles and diaper changes.
Many of these things helped momentarily, but Paula has demonstrated an uncanny ability to habituate herself to any new situation and come right back to the norm of waking up between 12 and 2 a.m. and staying up for an hour or three.
So you'll understand why I feel a little foolish to hope that our new arrangement will deliver more than one, maybe two nights of restful sleep for all of us.
Starting last night, Paula is sleeping back in her toddler bed which lies on the coffee table next to Joel's and my bed. The toddler mattress is flush with our bed and the wall, see? The difference now is that only Joel will sleep in our bed. I slept on the futon.
Here's the logic: Paula wakes up in the middle of the night, and this usually doesn't disturb Joel's vegetative slumber. So if Joel can sleep through it and I can't, I sleep in the other room. The other benefit is that now Paula is used to dealing with Daddy in the middle of the night. She will not wake up alone, there will be a large, breathing lump of clay that looks and smells like her father. She will do whatever she needs to do for as long as she needs to do it, and then fall back to sleep once she's exhausted.
End result: Joel and I get more sleep, Paula gets a lot of opportunities to work out her sleep issues without help from or abandonment by Mom and Dad.
And after the first night I can report that I slept pretty well, from 9:30 to about 3:30 - that's sleep like I haven't had in a long time, then had my own bout of insomnia and have gotten some writing done. Peachy.
Wish us luck for tomorrow.
This site hosted by DreamHost.com and powered by Blog.Thank you for being visitor number
